Six dead and more critical

is not the sort of news anyone wants to hear. 

I tried not to panic yesterday because a family member could easily have been in the shopping centre where the incident occurred. Having heard nothing I assumed that person was safe but I knew others had not been so fortunate. It was all a little "too close to home" as they say. It was not the sort of thing we expect to happen in this country either. This is "not that sort of country" - or is it?

Quite possibly the person who committed this act was mentally ill. We will never know for certain what he was thinking because he is dead. It may be that this is better for all concerned. It is still going to cost a great deal of time and resources to investigate. There is the cost of the emotional and physical trauma for those directly involved and the emotional trauma of those peripherally involved. The financial cost will be high too but it is the other costs that really matter.

Those costs will go on for years. If the nine month old baby survives she is going to grow up without a mother - and that is a life sentence. I wonder what makes someone attack a mother and child, people they do not know...and I think of this happening in other places because there are people who are fighting for supremacy and control without any care for the individuals who stand in their way.

I am wondering too how the policewoman who shot and killed the perpetrator feels this morning. Yes, it is something she was trained to do but it would never have been something she really expected to do. She now has to live with the fact she has taken the life of another human being in an ordinary suburban shopping centre. Her action was to shoot and her reaction was to start CPR on the same person. The latter says a great deal about what sort of person she is likely to be. I hope she gets a lot of support from now on. She is going to need it...and telling her she is a "hero" is not the sort of support she needs.

No, we don't expect anything "like that" to occur here and it is wrong. It is also wrong it is happening in other places. I want people to think before they act - and they won't.